February 10, 2013

(Transcript. Video.) I had never heard of the guy, but he impressed the hell out of me, in part because the host Chris Wallace, introduced Cotton — a Republican from Arkansas — this way:

Congressman Cotton, for people who don't know you, you are kind of an interesting figure. You went to Harvard, you went to Harvard Law School, and then you spent five years on active duty, on the front lines, in Iraq and Afghanistan, so you have got a lot of credibility on this issue on both sides of the equation.

I'm not a complete pushover for credentials, but this made me want to pay attention when Wallace invited him to respond to Senator Dianne Feinstein's idea that we need, as Wallace put it, "a secret drone court, where the president would have to go to get approval before putting terror suspects on his kill list.... How do you feel about this idea? Before the president could target someone for assassination, especially an American citizen, he'd have to go get approval from a judge?"

COTTON: We don't need federal judges involved in sensitive and urgent national security matters, and it would be an unconstitutional infringement on the president's rights to keep America safe. So, if you take up arms against America and you fight in a terrorist training camp or on the front lines in Pakistan or Afghanistan or Yemen, you shouldn't be surprised if America reaches out and exacts justice against you.

A while later, there was a discussion of Leon Panetta's testimony about Benghazi. Co-panelist Bill Kristol went first and laid out the criticism of Obama pithily:

KRISTOL: I think it is genuinely shocking. The president -- Leon Panetta walked out of the Oval Office at 5:30 that night, after a previously scheduled meeting. The president never called -- he knew -- he briefed the president on what was happening in Benghazi and that the American ambassador was missing, and it was clear there could well be sustained and ongoing attacks, and the president never spoke to the secretary of defense or the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff the rest of that night, and, interestingly, Secretary Panetta said he never spoke to the White House later this night. So it's not as if he spoke to the national security adviser, Tom Donilon, or the chief of staff, Jack Lew, and said, and conveyed a message to or from the president.

So basically, the president seems to have checked out. He spent an hour that evening on the phone with the Israeli prime minister, Bibi Netanyahu, because there has been that flap about Israel at the Democratic Convention the week before, and I think he wanted for political reasons to show that he was in touch with the Israelis. They did a readout of that call, the National Security Council spokesman did. So they're busy talking to the Israeli prime minister, doing the readout of the call for the press, and he is not talking to Panetta and, insofar as we -- and Donilon, apparently, is not talking to Panetta. And it is really, I think, a dereliction of duty on the part of the president and his senior staff, and I think they should be asked about it. I think Tom Donilon, the national security adviser, and Jack Lew, the White House chief of staff, should -- the president did not talk to anyone. Did they even talk to the secretary of defense, or did they just say, do what you can and then totally checked out for that evening, and then the next morning the president goes off to Las Vegas for a fund-raiser?

Cotton followed on, bringing in his military expertise:

COTTON: It is not just shocking, I would say it is outrageous as well, and it shows he has lack of preparation to be the commander in chief and lead troops when they are in combat. You know, you mentioned I was in the Army. At Fort Benning, where I spent a year, you learn the eight-step troop leading procedures. Step eight, the final step, is not issue an order. Step seven is issue the order. Step eight, which is the most important step, is supervise. He said in September that I issued a directive to take whatever steps are necessary to protect our troops and our assets. And then as Bill said, he never again followed up, he never asked, is my directive being executed? That is the essence of leadership, and this is a complete failure of leadership.

WALLACE: What about the argument, Congressman, and I don't know, and Bill raises a legitimate question, maybe he was doing this through his national security adviser.

COTTON: What General Dempsey and Secretary Panetta said, indicates there was no further contact from the White House, and the president showed no curiosity at all. He had a conversation with Prime Minister Netanyahu that was in the middle of [the] political season when he was receiving criticism for not being engaged with the prime minister, and then probably preparing to fly off to Las Vegas the next day for a fundraiser.

When you have troops in contact -- when I was in Afghanistan, we had troops in contact. I was right next to the radio, monitoring that at all times. When the president has troops in contact in an embassy that he knows is insecure, that has to be the very first priority.

Cotton also got my attention earlier in the show when Wallace asked whether the decision to have Marco Rubio deliver the GOP response to the SOTU makes him "the new face of the Republican Party on Capitol Hill."

COTTON: I wouldn't say that decision makes him. I think he has been an emerging leader on Capitol Hill for Republicans, and across the country for two years now. He's a generation of new leaders, not just Marco, but Paul Ryan and Scott Walker and so forth, who are emerging and who I think are going to be the leaders of our party going forward.

So, wanting to portray Rubio as not The One but part of "a generation of new leaders" and needing to name some names, Cotton comes up with Paul Ryan — the erstwhile VP nominee — and — of all the others — Scott Walker. I read that out loud and Meade deemed it time to play the Governor Walker anthem one more time:

97 comments:

This is the kind of blog response that makes me think the Congressman intimidates you and threatens your way of thinking. Rather than substantively criticize what he has to say, you suggest his words aren't his own, based on no evidence whatsover.

As someone who worked for Congressman Cotton's Congressional campaign I can assure you that no one wrote his words or coached his performance. What you are seeing here is a once-in-a-generation character and intellect. Stay tuned.

He said in September that I issued a directive to take whatever steps are necessary to protect our troops and our assets. And then as Bill said, he never again followed up, he never asked, is my directive being executed? That is the essence of leadership, and this is a complete failure of leadership.

That has also been the Obama way on hurricane Sandy. Is it not true that there are still people caught up in FEMA red tape today? Even though Sandy came ashore on October 30th and today is February 10th -- a full three months and 11 days later?

Besides, chicklit: she's not the only one who can say crazy things for attention, right?

Now--explain to me how her posting that she had the hell impressed out of her by Congressman Cotton right after she said she doubted if Dr. Carson could even write his own speech doesn't smack of what I kinda think it smacks of.

I think that we are seeing why the left was so desperate to bury the Benghazi scandal until after the election. Does anyone doubt that GW Bush would have been in the situation room all night, or at least be in close touch, and that Dick Cheney would have been there first? And, they most likely would have given orders to militarily intervene, and then made sure that the orders were carried out.

Instead, we have the President informed about the attack, talk to the Israeli PM for an hour, then go to bed early so that he could fly to CA the next day for a fundraiser. And, because he was AWOL, nothing happened, except that Americans fought through the night, while he slept, four of them, including his ambassador, died.

Mark Levine the other day claimed that committing American military personnel across a national border requires the approval of the President, which was obviously not forthcoming, despite both a carrier group being 300 miles out, and fast reaction troops on alert about that far away in Italy. Others have claimed that this sort of thing in the past had standing orders for military support, which would have had to have been countervened. In the one case, the President would have had to give the orders, and didn't, and in the other, he would have had to give orders to stand down. Either way, it is hard, I think, to argue that the buck stopped at the President, and he was asleep early getting ready for that fundraising trip. I think that it is now fairly well established that he knew what was happening, and ignored it.

The whole notion of our president (not just Obama) as "commander in chief" is (I guess) constitutionally correct, but still a joke (at least after George Washington with a few exceptions). Modern presidents are lifetime politicians with the extraoridnary ambition necessary to become president. The notion that they are in any way qualified to command troops is ridiculous. The press and the politicians say it with a straight face because they are all in on the PR deal. Obama's combination of ineptitude and lack of concern does not surprise me. I have never sensed he had interest in anything other than himself and the big picture movement of our country as far as possible to the left.

Now--explain to me how her posting that she had the hell impressed out of her by Congressman Cotton right after she said she doubted if Dr. Carson could even write his own speech doesn't smack of what I kinda think it smacks of.

I'm still trying to second guess why Meade linked the campaign ad for Herman Cain in the Carson thread. Could it be to equate Herman Cain with Carson? It's difficult sort alleged racism from their concern that GOP is deliberately embracing black politicians. What I find disingenuous on Althouse's part (now I suspect Meade too) is their insistence on burying Carson's message apart from his promotion as a candidate. I think it's shameful that Althouse thinks Carson is a fraud. If she really believes it, I suspect it's based on her anti-religious bigotry rather than racism.

Lem: Perhaps I could be more specific and amend that to read her "anti-evangelical bigotry." The thing is, I don't see any what she may dislike about evangelicals in Carson--other than by association. And if someone were to dig (hello, Andy R?), would it be central or tangential to what Carson is trying to say?

Cotton was being kind. Obama failed much earlier in the process. He had broadly received the mission (Step 1) but shows no sign of having understood a) the nature of the enemy, b) the resources available, or c) the time constraints.

Consequently his warning order (Step 2) was at best fragmentary. You issue the warning order with the information you have available, then you update as more info comes in.

When Obama said, essentially, "we didn't have enough information" he demonstrates his inability to 1) understand the seriousness of the situation (little *time* available), 2) trust his field commanders to make quick decisions about what troops were available and get them deployed quickly, and 3) issue the actual order.

Reacting to things, to words, no matter who says them, w/o any contemplative? reflection on what exactly and why something is being said... I find most of the time, to be the cause of much needless confrontation.

After you fail to do step 8, I am shocked, actually shocked, that he woke up in the morning, discovered that not a damn thing had been done overnight to save those brave men, and didn't have somebody's ass by breakfast. Call that step 8B

I say that with all seriousiness, having been in Operations Centers when screams were coming over the radio.

Unless of course he didn't really give the order to secure our people, or didn't wink at Panetta when he gave the faux order...

I want us to win and win big. I want us to make our school proud, I want us to make our parents proud, our grandparents proud, our first and second cousins proud, our POONTANG proud and ourselves proud.

The only vortext I could find in the urban dictionary had to do with cell phone coverage or something.

The urban dictionary will not be helpful for the term vortex but the Blogger search box in the upper left corner to this blog will reveal the entire truth, pages and pages of pictures, twirly things all over the place, yes, a veritable ... wait for it ... eddy!

If a minority physician is going to become involved in politics, why can't he be more like Democrat Dr. Salomon Melgen?

"According the developing accounts, NJ Sen. Bob Menendez has a special relationship with mega-donor Dr. Salomon Melgen. In addition to campaign contributions, Dr. Melgen allegedly flew Sen. Menendez to the Dominican Republic on his private plane and may have provided the Senator with prostitutes. That soap opera, though, obscures a more troubling connection. According to a report in the Washington Post, Sen. Menendez intervened at least twice on behalf of Melgen in a billing dispute he had with Medicare....

But a grassroots effort may have been less important to Melgen than pressuring his allies on the Senate Banking Committee for new regulations. His friend and political beneficiary Sen. Menendez has sat on the banking committee since he joined the Senate in 2005.

Melgen has called himself a “victim” of Wall Street “greed.” In 2005 he sued Banc of America Securities, then an investment subsidiary of Bank of America, after he lost $15 million in what he claimed was securities fraud. He alleged that his entire investment was transferred into the account of a failed trader in order to help him cover a margin call."

Cotton is a bona fide star, stronger'n horse radish or train smoke. He's got an amazing personal story and his head is screwed on straight. I'm proud to have contributed to his primary election campaign -- his general election campaign was a cakewalk, even in purplish Arkansas.

I'm glad he caught your attention, Professor Althouse. In his day job at the Weekly Standard, Bill Kristol & crew have been covering his story for some time, but I think he's going to make more of a national impression soon enough.

According to the dipshits he listens to, blacks cannot succeed w/o affirmative action b/c of institutional racism, aka White Privilege. Therefore, any successful black who denies this is a pawn of the Rethuglikkkans, witting or unwitting.

Of course, if any of this bullshit were true, we'd observe lots of stuff we don't. For example, students who got into Ivy schools thru quotas would do extraordinarily well after being admitted. And they'd be as likely to major in STEM subjects as anyone else. There would be no need whatsoever for quotas in, say, law-school or grad-school admissions.

We call Obama the affirmative-action president b/c he was elected despite having no qualifications for the job. Also, he was re-elected despite being manifestly bad at the job.

Chip S. says:Of course, if any of this bullshit were true, we'd observe lots of stuff we don't. For example, students who got into Ivy schools thru quotas would do extraordinarily well after being admitted. And they'd be as likely to major in STEM subjects as anyone else. There would be no need whatsoever for quotas in, say, law-school or grad-school admissions.

Of course, there aren't quotas because racial quotas haven't been allowed for some time under affirmative action jurisprudence. Affirmative action programs are more subtle than that (see the Grutter case), but in any case your basic premise is incorrect.

We call Obama the affirmative-action president b/c he was elected despite having no qualifications for the job. Also, he was re-elected despite being manifestly bad at the job.

No, people who call Obama the affirmative action president are using racist rhetoric. I'll be kind and not say they are racists, as that requires more insight into their general personality, though many of the people using that rhetoric are racists. But they wouldn't need to bring up his race if they had more to go with. And he was re-elected because most Americans obviously thought he was doing a decent enough job and was a better option than Romney.

Sorry you're still bitter because you lost the election, but all the talk in the world about how "manifestly bad" Obama is at his job won't make it true. Maybe you should ask yourself why your side lost if he was so obviously and manifestly bad.

Cotton is actually a fairly common name among African-Extraction Americans in the South. Likely something to do with their career (non)choices I suppose. It also has English roots. what the hell difference does that make?

If you go search the Powerline blog the guys there had been following Cotton for some time. He was one of their featured candidates during the recent election. They were very high on him and today's interview showed why.

Any scheme that defines success in terms of demographic targets is a quota.

No, a quota is a set percentage. Not allowed under US affirmative action jurisprudence for many years.

Tell me, somefeller, if you're a believer in the essentiality of affirmative action, why do you consider it a criticism of Obama?

I actually don't think it's essential and could live without it in university admissions. But I don't think the fact someone may have benefited from affirmative action diminishes their accomplishments otherwise. However, I consider it a criticism of Obama because generally whenever it is mentioned it is used to diminish Obama's accomplishments and to demean him personally in a manner that ties into his race. Context matters, particularly given what we know about many of his critics.

Do you think that GWB was obviously good at his job b/c he won 2 elections? I doubt it very much.

No, but I don't lie to myself and think that his problems were so obviously and manifestly bad that it is inconceivable to think that the electorate should have gone the other way. I voted for Bush in 2000 (I thought he would have been a good moderate patrician Republican like his father - oops) and Kerry turned out to be a weak alternative in 2004. Something about Massachusetts, I guess.

But the answer to the question you suggested that I ask myself is pretty obvious--the entire MSM are in the tank for this incompetent.

Keep telling yourself that. Self-analysis and self-improvement is a painful task. But hey, keep it up and the Democrats will win in 2016, even though the 8 year cycle of presidential voting that has existed in modern times should cut strongly against them.

Congressman Cotton has a regular slot on The Hugh Hewitt Radio Show. So do Mark Steyn and James Lileks and many others. I'm surprised you don't already listen. For my money, Hewitt does the best long-form interview on radio.

Keep telling yourself that. Self-analysis and self-improvement is a painful task. But hey, keep it up and the Democrats will win in 2016, even though the 8 year cycle of presidential voting that has existed in modern times should cut strongly against them.

Wow. You and ritmo have essentially the same numerological approach to election cycles. Where did you two read this and how do you account for externalities?

Somefeller... honest? What qualification did Obama have when he ran for president in 2008? We were told *at the time* that he was qualified for an executive position *because he managed his campaign*.

And he wrote a book.

And was a junior state congressperson briefly followed by an even briefer stint as a junior senator.

What did he have in 2012?

A disastrous economy, ongoing wars, Guantanamo, kill lists, and Benghazi, which we weren't *allowed* to talk about because it wasn't fair to expect answers so soon.

He just needs more time, poor fellow. It's not his fault! Vote for him anyway because he simply can't fail. If we pretend he's not failing, that nothing bad his his fault, then it's all going to be good in the end.

No, those calling him the affirmative action president are not just grabbing onto that to attack him in the absence of anything substantive. They're pointing out that the *substance* is being utterly ignored by people who voted for him because they were excited about voting for someone who is black and now the consequences of being wrong about this symbolic "first" are too dire to allow.

He said in September that I issued a directive to take whatever steps are necessary to protect our troops and our assets. And then as Bill said, he never again followed up, he never asked, is my directive being executed? That is the essence of leadership, and this is a complete failure of leadership..

I believe people are misreading Obama's directives. He said he issued them when he found out what happened....which could easily mean the next morning. He wasn't talking about securing the personnel in Benghazi, but in other embassies. He did follow up on that

For those of you dinging Althouse, I'm certain those will be the comments she does't read. She doesn't have time to read all your comments, not even if you are a portal-user.

"COTTON: We don't need federal judges involved in sensitive and urgent national security matters, and it would be an unconstitutional infringement on the president's rights to keep America safe. So, if you take up arms against America and you fight in a terrorist training camp or on the front lines in Pakistan or Afghanistan or Yemen, you shouldn't be surprised if America reaches out and exacts justice against you."

This response alone reveals that Cotton is no more fit for elective office than President Obama or most of his colleagues in the Senate and House.